27) Relations

I woke up alone but with the smell of frying bacon in the house and a smile on my face.

You have to be so gentle with normal women and a Brute 2’s strength, but Scorn was a Brute 1.

That’s all I’m going to say about it.

Splashing two handfulls of water on my face after brushing my teeth was enough to get the grin off of it, then I headed into the kitchen.

Scorn stood at about my height, so with her standing barefoot in front of my stove it was easy to slip up behind her with one hand on her hip to kiss her neck.

Which still got a narrow eyed glare from her. "Don't be clingy."

Message received.

She had already been outside to collect eggs from the look of the basket full of still wet freshly cleaned eggshells. So I took care of the toast. Two slices for me, four for her. Bread is a little hard to find living off the grid, so she tended to go to town on the stuff.

After breakfast I followed her outside, claiming to want to get my guitar, only to find a tiger on the porch sniffing at the glider, and finding both of our our scents on it.

Khan gave me a narrow eyed look and growled.

Scorn marched across the porch at him. “No.”

Wrapping her arms around his body just below his forelegs, she began dragging him off the porch as he made grumbling complaining sounds at her. “No! You do not growl at my man…”

She had dragged him all the way to part way down the stairs, his entire lower body trailing along limp behind her, when she froze in place, dropped the tiger, and half turned to confirm I was still standing there and had heard everything.

I coughed into my fist and stared out into the distance as if there was something more interesting out there then a grumbling tiger flopped halfway down my stairs and a dark blond woman frozen in embarrassment. So, “Hey, why don’t I go get your boots for you.”

Khan was gone by the time I got back, Scorn sat on the steps while she put her moccasin boots on and stomped off without ever looking me in the face.

It was so, so hard not to say anything at her expense. But if I did, I was going to guess she would never come back.

I took the car to school and made a stop at a lawn and garden store before I went home for dinner. Scorn was long gone, but her trailer was still there.

She had parked it on the edge of the wood line in a flat spot no one had done anything with in the entire time my family had lived here.

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The side with the door was pointed towards the woods, with her fire pit and outdoor kitchen on the same side. Her kitchen garden was planted all around. All things like garlic and herbs, there was nothing ornamental.

Was.

By the time I drove off to do monitor duty, a dozen planter boxes of delphiniums, bellflowers, irises, and cornflowers, all of them in shades of blue to match her eyes, were planted all around her trailer.

Marking her territory as hers, by my hand. She might still take it wrong, invasive even. But I wanted to answer what she said in a way that she could take her time with deciding how to feel about it rather than put her on the spot.

Still, Shimmer questioned why I seemed, “Almost chipper. It’s weird, stop it.” before the team went out on patrol. Fable’s eyes went wide and she almost seemed to shake with excitement as she figured it out, while T-Rex noticed Fable, and gave me a nod of congratulations.

I tucked in an earbud to listen in on the open channel and anything Clovis, the team A.I. intelligence felt he needed to alert me to. Then I went up top to mount shelving units.

Shrike showed up an hour later.

She was wearing a hoodie to cover her hair and some long gloves to disguise her scaly clawed hands. There was a younger guy with white feathers for his hair mostly covered up with a painter's cap with her. In the pictures that we had recovered from Raven and the other rooms, he had only been around eight when Dr. Talons's first secret base had been raided, so I wasn't sure what his powers were.

Shrike seemed content to just walk around outside while pointing around and talking to her younger brother.

“Clovis, are you getting this?”

The Monitor Intelligence responded with, “Yes. Normally I would alert the team member on monitor duty, should I contact the rest of the team instead.”

I nodded, turning my head to where I knew there was a camera in the gas station so it would made sense for me to have just nodded to something said to me over an earbud. "Yes, broadcast this. Shimmer?"

She responded seriously, having picked up something in my voice. “Yes Orpheus? Report.”

"Shrike and one of her siblings are here, she seems to be, reminiscing I think. Maybe just be on standby in case I get in trouble, worst case scenario I doubt she would make the effort needed to kill a Regen 2 when she should think I’m a Normie.”

I heard a murmur of voices over whoever had left their com open as the team discussed things until Shimmer came back on the line. “We’re returning to base. Manifest will drop me on her if she tries anything. Be safe.”

Even as Shimmer said that Shrike was on her way over to the building, waving at me. As she got to the door she tried the handle and found it locked, at which point she waved at me again and began rapidly, obnoxiously, knocking.

I headed over and spoke up so she could hear me through the door. “We’re not open yet, we’re not even stocked.”

She shook her head. "I know, it's just that I used to come to this place all the time when I was a kid. I just wanted to check out what you've done to the place so far. Please."

When not screaming in rage and killing me over and over again, Shrike was actually a fairly nice looking woman, her face was thin to the point of nearly looking unhealthy. But she had an animated smile that lit up her whole face.

“You know what, let me get the lock. Just watch out for the paint cans on the floor, I’m not sure if the kid I got working with me got the lids on tight.”

Sorry to throw you under the bus Bill. But if I don't let her in, there is a fair chance she might force her way in, and I didn't want a confrontation out here at our supposed to be secret base.

As I opened the door I wondered for the first time why we had a secret base? I was the paranoid one about keeping my identity secret. Why was Shimmer, who hated lying, so set on the place?

Shrike and her brother came in and the older sister began excitedly talking about how Sam, the clerk when this had been a gas station would let her help herself to pop from the refrigerator and all sorts of snacks as long as she finished them before she went… She glanced over at me as I minded my own business measuring for shelves and marking the wall. “Home, before I left the store and went home.”

After a few more minutes, she glanced at where the original concealed entrance to the underground base had once stood, thanked me for letting them in, and left.

Deliberately walking around the store out of my view.

“Clovis, did you see where they went?”

“They vanished. Shrike linked hands with the younger man and they disappeared into an outline of the two of them made up of white light. I believe from your conversation with Raven, that the younger man is named Heron and he is the teleporter that allowed Dr Talon and his children to escape the raid on the base below the gas station. And rescued his sister Shrike from the holding cells.”

Shimmer broke over the line. "Just in case they're watching, put up a few more shelves and then call it a night. Don't worry about going home, if they are monitoring you, it won't be that hard to identify you. Act normal."

“Or at least as normal as someone who hooked up with Light Knight and Bravada’s adopted daughter. We are going to have a talk, right after I catch up with her.”